In 2019, 62% of Singaporeans surveyed by the Reuters Institute consumed news via social media. Almost half (48%) specified that they did so on Facebook. Aside from the traditional players, such as the mainstream media, Facebook has enabled even small set-ups to propagate news and views with ease. Who runs these pages? How do they behave, and how are they different from the mainstream media? What impact do they have on our public discourse?
Some of these questions can be answered with reference to the facts. This article collates, cleans, and analyses around 34,000 Facebook posts posted from 12 such pages before 11 June 2020 that provide active commentary of current affairs to better understand:
The 12 pages were selected as they can be considered non-mainstream outlets who reach their audiences primarily through social media. Some of these sites - The Independent Singapore and The Online Citizen - do have standalone sites but nonetheless interact with many of the sites studied on Facebook. These 12 pages are non-exhaustive and findings will be updated in line with studies of other pages.
Note: Fabrications About the PAP has since been taken down by Facebook on June 28. Facebook cited page behaviour in determining that the site had violated its community standards.
The main findings are:
Not all pages run the same. The timing of posts on these pages differ on two key metrics - (1) activity outside of office hours and (2) extent to which posts are scheduled
Beyond good and evil? The pages can broadly be divided into two distinct camps that are either exclusively pro or anti-Government divide when discussing domestic politics. Yet this categorisation does not hold up as well when analysing discussion of foreign affairs.
Echo chambers or sparring grounds? These 12 pages are aware of each other’s presence - especially those with larger follower bases. Some sites function exclusively as content generators while others serve to broadcast content that align with the page’s political sympathies.
The 12 pages differ on several metrics - number of likes, the date which they first became active, the number of posts to date as well as the location of their administrators. A summary of this can be found in the table below:
We can analyse the timing of each page’s posts over a day and within each hour. This reveals four distinct modes of operations.
In the chart above, post frequencies have been normalised (peak activity = 1) to provide a better visual comparison.
In the chart above, post frequencies have been normalised (peak activity = 1) to provide a better visual comparison.
The first group which includes pages such as factcheckersg and SG Matters appear to operate exclusively during working hours while also scheduling posts throughout the day.
Posts tend to begin at 8am and stop by 8pm. On certain pages such as factcheckersg, no posts are observed before 7am and after 10pm. From a social media optimisation point of view, this may seem odd, as activity is usually higher during commuting, lunch, and after dinner hours to drive reach and reactions. It could suggest that this category of pages does not aim to maximise reach.
A sharp dip in post frequency during lunch hour - between 11am and 1pm - is also observed across sites in this category.
2 key dimensions of difference amongst pages
At the same time, these pages post at specific minutes in each hour. The regularity of posts on these pages suggests that these pages may be manned by personnel dedicated to running the page. This is because the timing posts is an added activity that page administrators have to factor in in order to structure their pipeline of posts. In the case of SG Matters, the persistent presence of posts beyond the start, mid and end-point of the hour may indicate the presence of spare capacity that monitors and responds to ad-hoc policy issues that emerge.
This similarity in operations is striking especially given the large difference in their post volumes and following.
The second cluster of pages consisting of factuallysg and Global Times Singapore tend to operate primarily during office hours but appear to have no discernable pattern in terms of post over the hour.
Like the first cluster of sites, these pages share the same features of low post volume during lunch and out-of-office hours. However, where they differ most distinctly is the post volume over the course of the hour.
The lack of a discernible post pattern suggests that the pages, while also possibly professionally managed, serve a different function from the pages identified in the first cluster. The randomness of post times over the hour could indicate their more ‘responsive’, just-in-time function of reacting to emerging political issues, or a lack of a pipeline of ready-made posts.
The third cluster consists of pages that operate beyond office hours and actively schedule posts.
These four pages - Everyday SG, fabrications about the PAP, The Online Citizen and Wake Up Singapore - continue to post sporadically at odd hours especially during times when social media is most active. It is interesting that all four pages command a significantly larger following than the pages that were in clusters 1 and 2. These pages also appear to have deliberate posting strategies and professionalisation, as evidenced by the presence of distinct posting times over the hour. This most closely mimics an optimised social media operation one might expect of a large business or organisation. Taken together, it suggests that the focus of these pages is to focus on catching eyeballs with the intent of influencing opinions to perspectives shared on the pages.
The last cluster of pages - Democracy and Human Rights in Singapore, Fabrications By the PAP, State News Singapore and The Independent Singapore - are defined by posts outside office hours and irregular posting times across the hour. The goal of such pages, while still focussed on gaining traction for their posts, have different strategies to do so. These pages, with the possible exception of The Independent Singapore given its scale, exhibits greater evidence of community-run operations. Posters may not be available during office hours, and may not be deliberately prioritising posts.
It is interesting to note that the posting activity of Fabrications By the PAP witnesses a sudden, unique uptick in activity nearing midnight.
What is clear, however, is the growing importance of social media in structuring, responding to and influencing debates on current affairs. Page activity has increased exponentially across almost all of the 12 pages analysed, perhaps due to the impending general election. However, the increase in post activity has been sharpest in pages that are most politically engaged - they are namely Democracy and Human Rights in Singapore, SG Matters, Wake Up Singapore, Fabrications Against the PAP, The Online Citizen and The Independent SG.
This analysis suggests that there is some truth that pages can be broken down into “pro” or “anti” government categories. However, such a categorisation may also be overly reductive. To analyse this, periods where more than 5 of the 12 pages are engaged in discussion about the same issue for more than 7 days were selected. The events selected are as follows:
I. Domestic issues: 2016 Bukit Batok By-election
II. Foreign affair issues: Terrex Incident
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